maskormenace | video; sleep no more eyyyyy I'm not funny

First of all, I hate to say this but Calendar Man's ported out. He didn't show up for work, so I did a bit of prowling around [ aka breaking and entering ] and he's not asleep either.

[ But that involves dealing with feelings and acknowledging friends leave and while the Doctor's trying his hardest to get better at that, he still has some issues. Let's not deal with feelings by talking about things instead. There's a chalkboard behind the Doctor and he writes out what he's saying as he talks through his theory. ]

Speaking of the sleeping thing, a proposition: I think I know who caused this.

All those who are sleeping are stuck on the inside of a dream. Now that narrows down our playing field already. This isn't tech based, this isn't tailored to biology—thanks for confirming that suspicion by the way, Haen, points for you. This is an imPort power, plain and simple, and it's probably one of those more stupid magical or esoteric powers.

The dreamers are having a shared dream, an alternate universe with a point of divergence at February 2016, when the Russians attempted to occupy the Porter cities. No word on the state of eyepatches in this alternate universe but it does mean that this imPort was there. Some of the details of the dream that people've told me cement that the likelihood that whoever caused this was probably around back then. After all, Wikipedia's great for bare bones but it's no substitute for lived experience. Whoever this is, they're certainly powerful and they've been here a while.

Huh, you might say, this whole shared consciousness thing sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it Doctor? Well random imPort, you're correct! There was that business with the memories back in October, which is a little bit this on a smaller scale. There was an alleyway that somehow triggered an involuntary sharing of memories. After all, if someone can reach into our heads to pull out a memory, they can certainly reach into our heads to pull us into a dream—trust me, that's easy, I've got weird Time Lord powers, I know.

Most importantly, that was the same sort of aggravatingly anti-tech as this problem is. [ There's a pause, while the Doctor stops writing on the chalkboard and, with his other not-chalky hand, pulls out the sonic screwdriver from his pocket. ] Plus? I've been getting some of the same weird readings from people in the dream that I got from the memory whatever. Getting the same nonsense twice is odd, which means it's probably not nonsense.

Also? [ and in a very bad imitation of a gameshow host, the Doctor continues with, ] Billy Kaplan, come on down! A little bird told me that you might not know precisely who caused this mess, but you'll know how to fix this. Can't say much more than that, birds are horrible conversationalists and I'm a little bit rusty on my sparrow. [ This is 100% the Doctor mixing metaphors with actual truth mixed with nonsense. Raina straight up tattled, thanks girl, you're the best. Having finished writing things on the chalkboard, the Doctor turns to the camera with a grin. Thankfully, he's tl;dred this and the points he's reading are written on the board in chalk. ]

Tl dr! [ And yes, he said out the letters 't', 'l', 'd', and 'r' like a goddamn grandpa who just learned to text-speak ] Point one, very powerful with powers that are good for mucking with your head. Point two, the Russian occupation. Point three, a repeat offender. Point four, Billy Kalpan. Put them all together and that reveals our culprit to be.....

[ cue a very anticlimactic shrug. ]

Somebody! I know who it is, I just don't know the name. There's a lot of us, after all, I don't know every imPort. Give me some names, let's figure this nonsense out, we've got people's boyfriends to wake up! [ There's a pause, before, ]

Also, it's not Crane. Or Julian, obviously, what with the whole being Ported out thing. We can cross those two off the list. Likewise, if you can help me piece together how fire birds work into this, I'd appreciate it. The little bird was a bit vague on that part.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dunno? I've never actually been to Vegas--or at least, I haven't in a good hundred years or so. I probably went when I was younger but two thousand years of memory, you can't remember everything at once.

Right.

[ Carl rubs his face. ]

And why did you say Crane didn't do this? Isn't his gimmick is poisoning people?

His gimmick is fear. This dream is weird, but it's not scary.

Fine, his gimmick is posioning people with fear.

[ And then Carl scowled. ]

Not scary? My dad was torturued and killed in that dream.

[ Wait. ]

Well, that's no different than what happen to him here, just by someone different.

Can't see why you wouldn't call it scary.

Edited 2017-04-27 02:20 (UTC)

Because scary's different from worrying or traumatizing. Something can be traumatic but not scary.

[ He scoffs. ]

Not where I'm standing.

Then explain it to me.

[ said as if it's the most simple thing in the world. ]

Everything that people think it's scary, like the stuff about zombies eating you like in the movies - you live through that, it's still scary. I lived through zombies, it's still scary, it's not a joke, and I saw good people die from it. Sometimes they die because of your fear, and you didn't stand up and deal with it because you are either stupid or don't care, then you'll be the next to die.

I've seen the worst of people, the very worst, and nothing scares me more than see my people be trapped by those who want to be the worst.

Death's not scary though, [ the Doctor can't help but muse, again as if it's the most sensible thing in the world, before he goes onto the next question. ]

Anyway, you can still have traumatizing things without them being scary. And can something really be scary if you don't know to be scared to begin with? The people in that dream...some of them think that they've always been there and they've always been with the Russians. I don't know if they'll be scared or not when they learn the truth, but they'll certainly be traumatized.